Narrative Quantum Cosmology in Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen

Twentieth-century drama has made the stage a site for reflecting on science. Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, considered by many as one of the most striking contributions to “science plays,” portrays the elusive yet crucial short meeting of the two pillars of quantum physics, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, in the autumn of 1941. The play employs ‘real’ scientists as characters that recurrently refer to and explain their scientific ideas such as uncertainty and complementarity, recognized as the Copenhagen Interpretation. Adopting the approach of possible worlds theory, this article analyses the concept of ‘possible worlds’ as projected in Copenhagen in light of the idea that physics itself has proposed a proliferation of parallel universes (multiverse). In fact, our main thesis is that the play offers an alternate history and brings about a myriad of counterfactuals that are tested as “drafts.”

Brain as Transducer: What if the brain is not a self-contained information processor? What if it is simply a transducer?

Evolution has not only produced millions of different species; it has also produced millions of different transducers. Our bodies are encased in transducers that convert distinctive properties of electromagnetic radiation, air pressure waves, airborne chemicals, liquid-borne chemicals, textures, pressure, and temperature into similarly distinctive patterns of electrical and chemical activity in the brain. What if, at some point - perhaps when humans first developed language and consciousness - the random mixing of genes produced a brain that could send signals to and receive signals from an alternate universe? Unlike string theory or theories of parallel universes, the theory that the brain is bidirectional transducer is directly testable, and empirical support for this theory has the potential to profoundly change our understanding both of ourselves and of our universe. It will help to explain, in rational and objective terms, more than 50 odd phenomena that have baffled humans for eons, among them: dreams, hallucinations, schizophrenia, and even claims about bizarre experiences such as demonic possession and communication with the dead. Neuroscience has been hamstrung for half a century by its reliance on the information processing model of the brain - a metaphor that has shed no light on how the human brain actually works. Let’s set aside the metaphors we have used for 2,000 years to "explain" human intelligence. Transduction theory is a testable theory consistent with evolutionary theory and with three core theories of modern physics - string theory, inflation theory, and quantum theory - each of which predicts the existence of alternate universes.

Philosophy of Physics: A Very Short Introduction

Philosophy of Physics: A Very Short Introduction explores the core topics of philosophy of physics through three key themes: the nature of space and time; the origin of irreversibility and probability in the physics of large systems; how we can make sense of quantum mechanics. Central issues discussed include: the scientific method as it applies in modern physics; the distinction between absolute and relative motion; the way that distinction changes between Newton’s physics and special relativity; what spacetime is and how it relates to the laws of physics; how fundamental physics can make no distinction between past and future and yet a clear distinction exists in the world we see around us; why it is so difficult to understand quantum mechanics, and why doing so might push us to change our fundamental physics, to rethink the nature of science, or even to accept the existence of parallel universes.

COVID-19 Pandemic and Apocalyptic Literature: An Analysis of Margret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake at the time of Coronavirus

Literature has been an imitator of life for generations on this earth, this literature has voiced the voiceless. Recent contemporary and postmodern literary theories have catered to burgeoning notions of logic that go beyond human survival on the planet. Science fiction is a genre of fiction that encompasses imaginative concepts like futuristic scientific-technological settings, faster than light, past and future spatial time travel, the existence of parallel universes and extraterrestrial life etc. An outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by a novel acute respiratory syndrome of coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) occurred in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China. The outbreak was declared as a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization on 30 January 2020. During this crisis, literature also plays an important role and apocalyptic literature has shown the disastrous consequences if humans didn’t stop their behaviour and attitude towards the world. This research project aims to take literature out of the realm of imagination and present the harsh realities of culture. This study revealed how literature represents the truth of the world that science is learning every day, and how certain inventions can have harmful effects if they are not halted in time. This research analysed the novel Oryx and Crake in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic and pointed a convincing glimpse of the future. Snowman (protagonist), known as Jimmy before humanity was overrun by science, is trying to live in a world where he might be the last human Snowman tells the tale of how Crake’s scientific ambitions contributed to the abolition of human civilization. The researcher emphasizes how the reel depicts reality and how people are to blame for the degradation of their world.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND DIGITAL CONCORDANCES AS TOOLS FOR THE EXPLICATION THE SUBJECTIVE REALITY OF THE AUTHORS OF THE SECRET TAOIST SCRIPTURES

The article reflects the experience of using a modern academic, instrumental and methodological base for the analysis and introduction into a wide research circulation of the poorly studied written monuments of the Supreme Purity (Shangqing) Taoist lineage, that reflect specific cosmological issues. The author believes that the modern academic base, prepared by the pioneering research works of Western scholars, supplemented by the outstanding achievements of Japanese and Chinese Sinology and signifi-cantly expanded by prominent Taiwanese researchers, combined with up-to-date digital tools for information analysis, makes it pos-sible to move on to a scrupulous study and translation of even the most secret scriptures of the early Supreme Purity Taoist lineage. The paper presents the results of a preliminary study of one of these texts, namely «Scripture on Dipper Transfer with Three Limits for Opening Heaven» (HY 1306). These results allow to conclude that in early Shangqing Taoism there was an integral system of cosmological concepts based on the special perception of the stars of the Northern Dipper (Big Dipper) and including the following components: a notion typologically comparable with the concept of “creative cosmogony” by Stanislav Lem, reflected in his “The New Cosmogony” («Alfred Testa “Nowa Kosmogonia”»); the notion of Multiple universes; ideas about the parallel universes; psy-chotechnical techniques of “time management”, and algorithms and procedures for “Chronotope travel”.